1. Middle English Dialects and The Great Vowel Shift
The Role of Dialect Mixture
In Late Middle English

2. Middle English Dialects
Cultural and political backgrounds of Medieval England lent themselves to dialectal diversity
Northern England largely Scandinavian until 1066
Feudal system arrived with William the Conquerer in Peasants were bound to the land, unable to travel without permission. Few autonomous towns thrived until the 14th century.

3. Dialect “Smoothing” Crusades brought additional dialectal contacts.
Troops massed in coastal towns, served together, and returned in groups.
“Then longen folk to go on pilgrimages…”
Towns become major players after 1351 (Black Plague end point).
Results in the Peasant’s Revolt.
English becomes official language of law in 1362.
London grows in importance culturally and politically.

4. Dialectal Boundaries
So numerous you could talk of a county-by-county breakdown (p. 189).
Five general areas: Northern, East Midland, West Midland, Southern, and Kentish.
Features: Verbal endings, present participial ending, plural pronouns, vowel differences, consonantal differences,

5. Dialectal Differences
Plural, present tense ending:
OE: -að, we cumað to strande ‘we come to the shore’
Northern: -es, we comes
Midland: -en, we comen
Southern: -eth, we cometh
Present participial ending:
OE: -ende, lovende
Northern: lovande
Southern: lovinde; loving

6. Periphrastic Periphrasis: multiple words for one grammatical concept
Inflective infinitive: “to lufianne” “to love”
I like “to swim”
Ic thyce to swimanne.
“to swim”
“for to swim”
Passive voice: where the patient (experiencer) of an action is the subject of the sentence.

7. Passive Voice The student read the book. Agent action Patient
The book was read.

8. Perfect Aspect
Perfect expresses past action distant from time of speaking
To Have/to be
ME Thi brother is comun
Y have synned

9. Development of Modal Auxiliaries and Future
OE willan “to desire/to want” express future in periphrastic constructions in ME
OE sculan “to feel obligation”

10. Subjunctive OE ic sweve ACTION-subjunctive
OE ic telle [that Hrothgar was--SUBJ king]

11. “Methinks”
OV: In certain sentences where the verb has a pronoun object, the object proceeds the verb.
ME I you beseech\
OE had very small inventory of “impersonal verbs.”
“thyncan”—impersonal verb, “to seem.”
“Methinks”— “It(unexpressed) seems to me.”

12. More Dialectal Differences
Plural pronouns:
OE: hie, hem
Northern: thei, them
Southern: hi, hem
3rd p. sing. Feminine
OE: heo, hie
N: scho/sche
Southern: heo/ho
Vowel differences:
OE: stān
Northern: stane
Southern stone
Consonant differences:
Initial voiced fricatives
Southern: vox ‘fox’; vixen (pl.  feminine), vat ‘fat’, vrom ‘from’, vader, ‘father’, zaul ‘soul’
Initial /tʃ/
Northern: kirk
South: church

13. Great Vowel Shift
GVS sound change that separates Middle from Early Modern English; complete by 1700.
Complete reordering of the vowel space that accounts for the lack of phonetic correspondence between English and its alphabet.
Only affected long vowels.
Online tutorial